


heartlines

by skinnyties



Series: lover to lover [1]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Confessions, Emotional Constipation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-05 23:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15182138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinnyties/pseuds/skinnyties
Summary: Harvey declines Mike's request for him to be his best man, and Mike just won't let it go.





	heartlines

Just shy of forty-five, he’s grown to find solace in his loneliness and the quiet of his empty abode. Learning to enjoy his own company had taken him more time than he could possibly recount, but the ability to be alone and be okay with it is something that Harvey now sees as priceless.

Harvey’s apartment has basically become a thoroughfare for unimportant lovers over the years; but they come out exactly as they go in: unimportant, fleeting, the flavour of the evening. His bedroom floor has felt the thud of a thousand items of clothing being shed onto the hardwood, and it’s felt the relief of them being picked up not too long after.

Laughter had forced its way out of his chest the first time his therapist suggested that all of these women were trying to fill some sort of hole in his life—that’s right, Harvey had _laughed_. He’d abashedly chuckled whilst his brain kicked right into overdrive thinking how he could have possibly not noticed that.

Because trying to compensate (even subconsciously) meant that he cared, and caring meant he was weak. It’d been Harvey’s mantra for as long as he could remember—ever since his family had fallen apart, since his father had died, since the one and _only_ time he’d let his emotions get the better of him on a case.

It was then that Harvey Specter realised that he was tired.

He was tired of giving himself over to temporary strangers to make him feel something – anything – to no avail. So, he simply stopped trying to fill this hole in his life. For the most part, he knocked the promiscuity on the head – aside from the occasional night that he let himself be led astray – and he just learned to enjoy his own company. As hard as it had been, it was a hell of a lot easier that admitting that he had any sort of problem.

Harvey finds himself enjoying the aforementioned silence, the calm, when an obnoxiously loud knock at his door breaks whatever trance he’d been in whilst watching the world go by through his window. He carefully places the glass tumbler down that he’d been sipping his scotch from, and checked the time on his watch because who in God’s name is knocking on his door at half past midnight on a Thursday night/Friday morning?

To be fair, he should’ve seen it coming. After the events and the drama from the past few days, there wasn’t any real way it was going to be anybody but Mike standing on his doorstep.

His friend’s flushed face takes him right back to their conversation just two days before, the conversation that had wedged a gap between him and the most important person in his life.

 

_“No.”_

_Mike’s lips had quirked up at the word, as though what he was hearing was some kind of inside joke that he wasn’t a part of, but longed to understand._

_“What?” he’d prompted._

_“I can’t, Mike. I’m sorry.”_

_The feeling in his chest was one he’d only felt a handful of times before; it was similar to the sensation of his chest tightening when he’d walked in on his mother in bed with Bobby, and it was something akin to the way it felt to be able to hear his own blood pumping in the aftermath of Donna leaving him to work for Louis. That was how Harvey knew that he had to nip this conversation in the bud before it escalated to a place he never wanted to revisit._

_“Is this some kind of joke,” Mike asked, “or are you seriously telling me…that you won’t be my best man? Because if this is a joke, Harvey, I’m seriously struggling to figure out the punchline.”_

_Harvey had dragged his hand down his face desperately as he stood up from Mike’s couch, “I’m serious, but I can’t talk about this right now, I’m sorry.” His attempt to gather whatever he’d brought with him to Mike’s apartment and to shrug his suit jacket back on was made feeble by the way his hands with lightly trembling._

_“Stop apologising and tell me what the fuck is going on? What’s wrong with you?” Mike had spat. And Harvey still remembers the exact way the venom – that was covering the confusion and the hurt – in his voice had made him feel._

_“I have to go,” and without giving Mike a chance to stop him, Harvey had fled his best friend’s apartment, not looking back._

The iridescent cerulean of Mike’s eyes makes a fat lump gather in his throat as they lock onto Harvey’s over the threshold of his doorway.

“Mike—”

“I just wanna know why, Harvey.” He sounds desperate now. Harvey knows Mike, and so he knows that every second he should’ve been spending focusing on the wedding these past two days, he’s spent wondering why the hell Harvey had choked and left him in the lurch as if he was fleeing the scene of a crime.

The mere thought of coming clean to Mike – however relieving and tempting as it seems when sugar-coated – makes him shudder with anxiety. And so instead, Harvey stays silent. He steps about a metre backwards into his apartment and he says nothing. Turning his back to Mike, he swallows against the lump in his throat and tries to warn off the urge to throw up at the feeling.

He hears footsteps and knows that Mike’s following him as he walks away, yet again. Harvey eventually finds himself back at his spot by the window, and he picks his abandoned drink up in his shaking hands and still says absolutely nothing because _what is there to say?_

Harvey attempts to focus on the blur of the city whilst he wracks his brain for a way out of this confrontation. He goes down every possible avenue for a solution, but comes up empty.

He’s knocked out of his reverie by Mike’s voice breaking the silence.

“You’ve always been kind of hard to understand, Harvey, but this is something else entirely,” he says, “you’re just so fucking confusing. I can’t remember you not being that way. All those years ago at Sarjan’s dinner party when I—”

Holding up his idle hand, the older man stops him before they go somewhere they can’t easily pull back from, as if they’re not far enough in already. “Don’t.”

When Mike says nothing, he does everything in his power to continue and scoffs, “come on, Mike. You know it had to happen that way—there are rules. You’re not stupid, I don’t even know what possessed you to believe that that was a good idea.”

Harvey spits his words, tries to inject any semblance of malice into his words, even if the memory of that night is still fighting to eat away at his resolve and at his self-control. He hears Mike gulp behind him, but still refuses to turn around and look him in the face.

“Was that the only reason? The rules? The _bylaws_?” his tone and his question are almost mocking, and Harvey’s feeling sicker by the second. His stomach is contracting with nerves like nothing he’s ever known.

But still, he’s Harvey Specter, and he doesn’t let his guard down for anyone. He doesn’t show vulnerability, not even to associate turned best friend, and so he manages to keep his voice level as he finally turns around and he says, “of course I thought about the goddamn _bylaws_ , Mike. One of us had to.”

Mike’s expression softens like he’s hurting, and Harvey knows that he is.

“That wasn’t what I asked,” he says faintly, but still manages to stand his ground. In the moment, Harvey thinks bitterly that he’d taught him well. “I asked if it was the only reason it played out that way, if it was the only thing stopping you.”

The thump of Harvey’s glass being dropped down onto the cabinet at waist-level beside him is the only sound between them as he weighs up his options on how to answer Mike’s question. He’d tried to lawyer his way out by not really answering but keeping it close enough to the truth to fly, but he’d clearly forgotten that Mike knows him just as well as he knows Mike, and that he knows all of Harvey’s little tricks like the back of his hand.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he finally replies, holding his hands out in a gesture of giving in, “and I think we’re getting into dangerous territory here. You should probably go, Mike.”

The words burn his throat and flip his insides as though he’d swallowed bleach, but they’re out now, and Harvey feels like he’s just pled the fifth to being asked if he knows where the body is.

Mike’s little gasp of understanding makes him want to die, as does the slight hesitation, before, “you felt the same way, didn’t you?”

As he turns back towards the window, Harvey can’t help but think about how he’s probably going to have to start mourning the loss of yet another important relationship very soon. Because he can’t see a way up out of this exchange, no matter what he says next or which way it goes.

Regardless of his reply, Mike is still set to marry Rachel on the soonest Saturday. They’re still going to have a glorious white wedding and say _I do_ and dance with stupidly happy grins on their faces and Harvey’s going to be left gasping for air in the dust.

“Mike, I want you to leave. I’m serious.”

“Is that what this is? Do you still feel that way?” he reaches out to clutch at Harvey’s arm in an attempt to get him to turn around and _just fucking look at him,_ but Harvey tugs his arm out of Mike’s grasp before he gets the chance and starts to pace, needing to be anywhere but that close to the other man.

“Don’t fucking walk away from me. I asked you a question!” and Mike’s gaining on him as he heads towards wherever in his apartment, because he can’t bear to stand in the same place as the younger man’s words pretty much strip him naked.

He feels Mike’s hand brush against him again, and Harvey just snaps.

“What the fuck do you want me to say, Mike?!” he yells, “what good is talking about our feelings going to do? Explain that shit to me because right now, you’re acting like a petulant little kid who’s blinded by curiosity and can’t just let things go when he’s fucking told to.”

Mike looks startled, he clearly hadn’t expected Harvey to fly off the handle like he had. He takes a deep breath and tries to keep his voice level.

“I don’t know—but I’m not leaving here until we talk about this, Harvey. And I’m definitely not gonna let you talk to me like I'm a child.”

“What’s the point in talking about this, huh?” Harvey’s managed to lower his voice now, but his vision still swims with whatever mystery emotion is overwhelming him in that second, and he feels like he’s just helping Mike strip him bare as he says, “you’re engaged to Rachel—you’re _marrying_ Rachel! In two goddamn days!”

Stepping back from him, Mike keeps going until the backs of his knees hit a chair in Harvey’s lounge, and he sits before dropping his head into his hands. The room is silent and the air is so thick Harvey could choke but he just keeps his eyes on Mike’s sagging form, wondering what the hell he’s got left in his war chest to throw at him next.

“How couldn’t you tell me that you felt like this? And how could you wait until now to start acting up because of it?”

Harvey isn’t ready for another intrusive question, and he’s definitely not ready to just live with Mike’s accusatory tone which shows that he’s clearly blaming him for this, as if he hadn’t just practically forced his way into his apartment and held a gun to his head until he’d confessed.

“ _Excuse me_? You’re acting like I just came out and told you—like I just decided at the last minute to throw a spanner in the works for the good of my health,” Harvey furrows his eyebrows down at Mike when he finally looks up and is about to interrupt him.

But Harvey is always bigger and stronger and louder so he just keeps on rambling, “I denied everything. You came in here all guns blazing, like a dog with a goddamn bone and forced me to talk about what I was more than happy to keep to myself. So, don’t you dare blame me for this.”

Mike lets out some hollow, sour laugh, that Harvey’s only heard when he’s accidentally eavesdropped on the younger man when he’s been arguing with Rachel or when he’s come to blows with Louis or any other person that seems to hurt Mike like it’s second nature. He’s never heard it aimed towards him though, and it fucking stings.

“Denying anything was pointless, clearly,” Mike grumbles, “did you not think I’d figure out something was going on when my _best fucking friend_ refused to be my best man? Did you think I’d just leave it at that and go and ask Harold or something? Fuck, Harvey.”

Feeling exhausted and borderline battered, Harvey takes the seat adjacent to Mike’s and inhales shakily, tries to get his shit together. He does all he can to ensure his voice isn’t watery and thin before he decides to just jump in, feet first. Because Mike’s already got him where he didn’t want to be, so he figured that to bring this to a close, they had to at least reach some sort of climax.

“There’s nothing I can do about you marrying her,” Harvey manages, and the way Mike’s head flicks up in his peripheral vision makes his heart lurch. “I waited too long, I’m too late—I know that.”

“Harvey—” Mike starts.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Harvey doesn’t look up as he speaks, because his throat is already scratchy and he feels so weak and exposed, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to torture myself by accepting front row tickets to the ceremony, Mike.”

His words seem to sink in quickly with the younger man sat beside him, because he laughs bitterly and stands up. The difference to how he was acting before Harvey’s confession is that now, he’s clearly fuming about some part of his friend(?)’s words.

“Let me get this straight—you’re not going to be standing by me on the most important day of my entire life because of a _crush_? Seriously?”

In the half a decade that Harvey’s known Mike, there have been a total of three times that he’s actually wanted to punch him square in the face: the time that Mike got involved with Trevor again and Harvey had to bail him out, the time that Mike had bought his father’s master tapes out of nothing but pure spite, and the time that Mike refused to inform on Kevin even though doing so would get him out of prison.

He’d managed through the betrayal and lies provoked by Jessica (because he knew deep down that Mike was sorry and cared about him) and Mike’s constant caring and martyr behaviour over the years (because he knew that it was simply in his nature to be that way); but hearing Mike whittle his feelings – the ones that had been eating away at him for years and making him feel like something he’d never wanted to be – down to a crush, Harvey thinks that if he was to let himself go at that moment, he wouldn’t be able to be held responsible for his actions.

“Don’t you dare belittle me like that,” he seethes, “don’t you trivialise my feelings after you’ve forced me to open up to you because you’re upset, Mike. You constantly go on about how much I’ve done for you—so let me do this for me.”

Harvey’s heart is pounding in his ears, threatening to deafen him. His throat feels like it’s starting to close up, and it’s in that moment that his eyes start to sting with unshed tears that he hadn’t even felt coming.

When he catches Mike’s eye, he recognises a look that he’d seen a handful of times before—the look that says Mike’s realised that he’s being an asshole. He knows that Mike’s finally cottoned on to how deep this runs, and when he stands up and steps towards Harvey, the elder can’t help but rise to his feet and back away.

But when Mike grasps his bicep again, fingers practically burning his flesh through the material of Harvey’s pyjama top, he stills and glances down to where Mike’s hand joins them.

“Harvey, please—”

“You can’t do this. I can’t listen to this shit.”

He looks up and finally catches those blue eyes, a plea in them so evident. For what, Harvey wasn’t sure, but the look tugged on his heartstrings enough for him to turn around fully towards Mike. No matter the harshness of his actual words, Harvey makes sure that his tone remains soft.

“I’m not in my thirties anymore, Mike. I don’t have age on my side to deal with all the drama, and the push and pull, and everything else that comes with you storming in here and demanding to know how I feel when telling you won’t fucking change anything. I made my choice, and then you made yours. That’s all there is to it.”

The words are obviously out of Mike’s mouth before he has time to mull them over. But once they’re out, there’s no getting them back in.

“What if I made the wrong choice?” he asks so quietly that if he hadn’t been listening to intently, Harvey would have to wonder if he’d actually spoken at all.

With that, Harvey’s heart plummets right into his stomach and he actually can’t believe what he’s hearing. There’s no way that Mike’s actually saying this—two days before his wedding, years after his first and only attempt at showing Harvey he was even remotely interested in him beyond their usual boundaries of Senior Partner and Associate. He feels himself start to lose it again.

“Don’t say that. Don’t fucking say that to me,” it suddenly comes to Harvey’s attention how much he’s swearing, but he can’t find it in him to actually care, “not now. You’re supposed to be over this—that’s why you dated Rachel, why you moved in together, why you’re getting married, Mike. You’re supposed to be over me.”

Mike’s hand is still resting on Harvey’s bicep, and his hand tightens in the wool as he begins to speak, “all those years ago when I made that pass at you, I knew my reasons weren’t unfounded. I knew that there was something there between us. Even when you rebuffed me, I should’ve fought harder, b-but I was so embarrassed when you pushed me away like you did that I just bolted.”

“I was there, Mike. I don’t need a play-by-play of it,” Harvey whispers, exasperated. “Don’t you get it? Nothing’s changed between us for the better since then. It’s too late.”

“Please, let me—”

“Aren’t you hearing me? It’s too late! We can’t pick up where we left off four goddamn years ago and we’ll never be able to. You need to fucking leave, Mike. Leave before we can’t go back at all.”

Harvey walks straight past Mike and towards the front door. As his sweaty palm reaches for the doorknob to pull it open and show him the way out, he’s pulled back by a hand in his; and this is a moment he’s imagined a few times over the years: what it’d be like to properly hold Mike’s hand—or have Mike hold his, as per the moment. The skin feels soft and supple like the rest of him, and Harvey can’t help the way he doesn’t even try to pull out of Mike’s grip.

Turning towards him, Harvey notices for the first time that Mike is actually starting to cry. He’d noticed him fill up a couple of times over the course of their relationship, but he’s never seen him cry, and the feeling it invokes is like nothing he's ever known.

Then, Mike’s pressing his forehead to Harvey’s before he can register his movements, and his hands are splayed across the sides of Harvey's face and it should all feel like too much, he should feel overwhelmed and like he’s partaking in something very wrong, but all he can feel is a lingering sense that this is how it should be.

Closing his eyes, Harvey exhales as evenly as possible, and he feels Mike shudder as the air blows against his face.

“You love her, Mike,” he states dumbly, hands still dangling at his sides like they have no purpose.

“I do. But I—”

“Don’t. You can’t.”

Harvey tries to keep breathing soundly, as hard as it is. He tries to force out a shaken breath but it leaves his body as more of a wracked sob. His lungs shutter once more when he feels Mike’s thumb stroke over the stubble on his cheek, just skirting his eye softly before returning back down to the side of his nose.

“I do, Harvey. Please,” Mike all but whimpers.

Their faces gradually increase in proximity and Harvey almost can’t stand it when their noses brush together. Almost. It’s all he’s ever wanted since that first near-night, he never imagined it would happen, much less like this.

“ _Please_ what? What do you want from me? What do you want me to—”

“I don’t—I don’t know, just—just _kiss me_ , Harvey,” and the way Mike says it, he's practically begging.

It’s like it was undoubtedly what he’d wanted Harvey to do, like it was stupid of him to even ask that when they’re this close together, when they’re pressed up against each other like this. And Mike’s words make him sick to his stomach, because this is something else he’s dreamed of more times than he could possibly count since that night. He’s imagined what it would be like to feel Mike’s lips on his, but this had never been the context of his made-up desires. There are never this many complications, this much potential collateral damage. There’s no Rachel—Mike is his and only his, always has been. But it’s a fantasy, and it’s one that he knows doesn’t have the substance to ever become reality.

Harvey wraps his arms around Mike’s back, strong and tight and secure and, for the first time in a long time, it feels completely like home. And so, because he knows that after tonight, he’s never going to get this chance again in his life, he lets himself indulge. Harvey sees the way that Mike’s eyes flicker down to his lips when he blinks, a silent plea where words don’t seem to be enough.

“Harvey,” he hears him croaks, a final attempt at persuasion.

Harvey quickly finds out that kissing Mike is different. From just a light press of their lips, he knows that right off the bat. The way that Mike’s lips slot perfectly against his isn't exactly something he's never experienced before, but it feels _so_ much better than it ever has. Sure, he’s had partners where mechanically, everything fit together and there were no bumps; but there was always an air of awkwardness to kissing strangers, Harvey found. It was as though the intimacy of mouths touching was too invasive for a one-night stand—although, he did it anyway, because doing it was always a lot simpler than thinking about having to explain why he wouldn’t. But again, Mike was different.

Mike is anything but a stranger. That uncomfortable stickiness of kissing someone he didn’t know, didn’t truly connect with, didn’t apply when it came to how he felt when Mike began to move in closer, pressing in deeper, moving his hands from Harvey’s face to wrap his arms around his shoulders, and causing the elder’s already laboured breathing to come up even shorter.

“Mike—” Harvey mumbles when he pulls away just enough to breathe through his mouth.

“Shh,” he’s quickly dismissed by Mike shushing him, and doesn’t bother to argue back before they’re properly kissing again.

His touch is light when he moves his arms from around Mike’s waist so that he can grab onto his hips, grip tightening enough to harness the right amount of control to back him against the nearest wall. Fervently, Harvey moves his lips down from Mike’s to skirt along his jaw, pecking and nipping ever so softly and relishing in the way that the other man trembles under the touch.

“You’ve no idea how much I’ve wanted this, and for how long—!” Mike gasps and cuts himself off when Harvey’s nibbling turns into a light suckle right below his ear, and he’s grasping at his broad back through the woollen material, “and how many times I’ve thought about what it’d be like—kissing you, touching you like this.” Harvey groans softly at the words and the smallest hint of a scratch down his back from Mike’s blunt nails, and presses himself impossibly closer.

The hard lines of their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces and Harvey is _obsessed_. He can’t get enough of the way Mike’s thin hips dig into the bottom of his torso. Mike being the tiniest fraction shorter creates that perfect angle that allows him to rut against Harvey, almost fluently, as he licks into his mouth with the most delicate ease, when it returns to his, as though he’s afraid that any sort of shift between their lips will shatter the moment.

“I think about this too, all the time,” Harvey pants out his confession, and his feet skid slightly against the floorboards when he pushes his hips into Mike's, sparking that friction that he never knew he needed so much, “you don’t know how fucking _tempting_ you are.”

It’s in that moment that Harvey thinks, _I can’t believe I turned this down._

And so, go figure, it’s in that moment that it all falls apart.

Because with the thought of how he’d rejected Mike’s advances once before comes the realisation that if there was any time to do that, it was now. Harvey should have pushed Mike away the second he got too close, because as he’d so adamantly tried to come to terms with over the past few months, Mike is getting married to someone else.

The weight of this seems to abundantly slam down on Harvey's shoulders all at once, and he pulls away from Mike without warning as if he’d been burned. Harvey all of a sudden feels dirty, having done the one thing he always absolutely promised himself he’d never do. He’d watched his parents’ marriage crash and burn because of a third party, and now he was one.

He doesn’t look at Mike, can’t bear to. Hearing that he’s still breathless, Harvey can imagine that the other man’s heart rate very probably matches his own, and the thought doesn’t do much to calm him down.

“Get out.”

He feels frankly fucking ridiculous and cruel as he spits those words, because Mike definitely wasn’t alone in this, and he knows that, but he can’t bring himself to think straight because the only thing pounding in his head right now is _Rachel, Rachel, Rachel_.

“Harvey, what the hell—”

“You need to go now, Mike.”

And then, Harvey makes what is unarguably his worst mistake of the night: he looks up.

He looks up and he sees the witty, razor-sharp kid he’d met on that first day, so fascinating and awe-inspiring like nothing Harvey had ever seen. He sees his first personal associate, someone to dump work onto turned someone to lean on when he needed any sort of support. He sees the guy that’s become his best friend, the person he trusts most in the world who has his back through _everything_. He sees the first person he’s ever actually loved enough to truly put above himself, and he sees him crumbling before his eyes.

Mike is looking at him with something in his eyes that he’s never seen—this god-awful hybrid medley of shame and guilt and sadness and anger and probably a thousand other mixed emotions that all add up to Mike letting out a choked breath and saying,

“Fuck you, Harvey.”

Before he knows it, Mike’s gone. The door slams, wafting a rush of air towards him but Harvey doesn’t budge, just stares at the place where Mike had been standing not ten seconds before, and wonders what the hell he’s just let walk out of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3


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